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In the late nights when I have time to work on Callisto (my Windows 8 XAML toolkit), I often am making changes that I really wish I could either pair with someone on or at a minimum solicit some feedback. Primarily single-person open source projects are lonely :-). Last night was no different. I had a user of Callisto having a problem with a specific code path. While my testing of the fix was fine, I didn’t want to rush it without him understanding the simple fix. I had no good way of showing him a combined diff to...

At the “Developing Windows 8 Metro style apps with C++” event that happened on 18-May-2012, we saw and heard some very interesting things. If you were watching live then hopefully you didn’t see how I tried to work through my presentation while my disk was suspiciously guzzling every last byte until it eventually ran out of space! But I digress…
During the keynote presentation by Herb Sutter, we brought up several customers that are well-known in the native code world to talk about their experiences with Metro style apps and C++/Cx. In particular hopefully this one caught your eye:
That’s right, the...

Last night after a quick e-mail exchange with Phil, David and Scott I revised my Silverlight Toolkit “NuPack” packages I had previously created when NuPack NuGet first came out. At the time there were a couple of things still not supported and frankly, I got busy and never bothered to check back. Scott had seen something on a forum inquiring why Silverlight stuff, namely our open source controls, aren’t deployable via NuGet. There wasn’t any other reason other than resources not currently scheduled to add this to the build flows, etc. So I spent a few minutes revising the packages...

Three years ago I wrote about one of the first full-featured casual games built in Silverlight (at the time Silverlight 1.1) which we called Zero Gravity. It was a game featuring Lt. Bennett a character who was lost in space and your job was to navigate him through simple puzzle boards back to his space ship. It is a fun little game that can keep you busy for a while and even get you frustrated on some of the harder mazes.
The project was done in concert with Terralever, an agency who has great experience in building great online casual...

I got enough feedback and suggestions that I figured it would be better just to put the code up on CodePlex rather than package zips on my blog :-). Here it is: FloatableWindow project. The latest build I have is up there which incorporates some feedback that I’ve received.
UPDATE: If you like this idea VOTE FOR IT in the Silverlight Toolkit!
Basically the ShowDialog() API operates the same way that ChildWindow.Show() does today. No changes there, popup is used. But when you just want some simple MDI type windows, use Show() which will not use Popup but rather add the elements...

If your a developer that spends any time with web services, you’ll basically probably end up working in one of two camps: REST- or SOAP-based services. Now with SOAP services you’re likely used to having a WSDL document describing the service, providing type definitions, etc. – something you can use developer tools like Visual Studio to Add Service Reference and get a strongly-typed object model to work with. If you’ve been doing Silverlight or ASP.NET (or any other technology really) development with mashup services, you probably have been working with REST-based services. These are services that don’t self-describe themselves in...

I’ve made no hiding the fact that my blog is build on Subtext and that I’m very happy with it right now. Lately though my wife has been blogging more (that’s another story) and she also started her own business. Being curious about all the WordPress love, I decided to start checking it out.
Thankfully, the Web Platform Installer helped me get started on WordPress without any troubles at all and I was up and running on my Windows server (I didn’t want to start another hosting account anywhere). I have to say, I really like what WordPress has done, especially...

One of the great things I like about some of our platform products is that they are building in extensibility more and more. Take Windows Live Writer as an example. It’s no secret on this blog that I’ve got a geek affair with that tool. I use it daily and have customized it (via plugins) and my blogging platform (Subtext) to make it even more of a best experience for me for web authoring. Writing plugins for Writer has been a lot of fun and a great way to get the functionality I want/need into a workflow without having...

The source code for the Silverlight 2 controls was just published! This is the source for the controls as shipped in the runtime and the SDK. When you download the project you’ll see the structure: The source, released under the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL), includes the source for the following controls in the runtime: ButtonBase Button HyperlinkButton CheckBox RadioButton ToggleButton ...

If you haven’t been aware, there has been a team at Novell working hard to make a version of Silverlight for Linux. This version, called Moonlight, has been in development since WPF/e it was first shown at the MIX conference (which by the way is happening in March with some really exciting stuff, so be sure to register for MIX09!). Moonlight hit beta this past December 2008 and the team has already been working on Moonlight 2 which is the Silverlight 2 compatible version. Right now, Moonlight 1.0 serves as a functional equivalent to the Silverlight 1.0 runtime, which...

This is a public service announcement for my Flickr4Writer project. It was recently brought to my attention that Flickr has some privacy settings that users can opt-in for in their account to protect their images. Some users felt that my plug-in for Writer was not honoring these settings. Truly, I didn’t know about them. You can read the thread on the discussion lists here if you are so inclined. For me it came down to a couple of items: Flickr enables users to set a flag to prevent “blogging” of their...

Today at Microsoft PDC, Scott Guthrie demonstrated some of the new controls that have been provided as a part of the Silverlight Toolkit. The Silverlight Toolkit was what was previously named the Silverlight Control Pack in the press release when the runtime was released. This toolkit provides a set of controls and themes for Silverlight 2. In this initial release, they are: AutoCompleteBox Chart DockPanel ...

Last week I had the pleasure of talking with the crew from the Herding Code podcast. Among the questions was one about the open source community and Silverlight. There was mention about MVCContrib and how that community sprouted almost instantly with the ASP.NET MVC initial releases. I let the Herding Code crew know that I believe there already is a vibrant open source community around Silverlight and pointed to things like DevExpress’ AgDataGrid control which is free and provides source. I also mentioned a project that did start right away around Silverlight 2 initial releases: SilverlightContrib. The project, started by...

If you’ve been playing around with Silverlight 2 for a bit now, you may have heard about/used the tool chiron.exe. It was a tool in the SDK that shipped in Beta 2 that was responsible (for among other things) at that time for packaging the XAP. Fast forward to release builds for Silverlight 2. No Chiron. Hey, what’s up? Chiron is still available for you if you want it. It is a part of the Silverlight Dynamic Languages SDK which is available on Codeplex. So if you need/want it, there you go. Some people were using Chiron...

One of the things I hear a lot about it wanting well-designed control templates/styles for developers to use in Silverlight (and WPF). As someone with that missing creativity gene, I agree. While we wait for some of these galleries to emerge (and designers to contribute), there is some hope for the rest of us today. For WPF developers, there has been a commercial resource available (not free) in the templates provided by XAMLTemplates.net. They provide various styles available for purchase for WPF templates and styles. There also have been some emerging in the Silverlight.net community gallery (look for...

One of the things that I’ve wanted to do since Silverlight released was two things with text, enable a Stroke and layout text on a Path. Both of which in Silverlight 2 aren’t readily available. Luckily we have a great ecosystem of developers and MVPs who love to extend our frameworks and create new capabilities for developers. Bill Reiss has done just that. You may recognize Bill from some XNA and Silverlight gaming fame. His game of Dr. Popper still remains my daughter’s favorite computer game! Bill has created a new Silverlight user control he calls PathTextBlock control. Bill...

Earlier this year I wrote my thoughts on the current mobile scene and what troubles certain players more than others. I made the assertion that Android will face the same troubles that Windows Mobile is challenged with. That being that Google/Android are providing a platform and not a physical device. I think it would be hard to argue that owning the complete platform and hardware is not a good idea. Apple’s complete control of every aspect of the channel provides them with the ability to deliver in a somewhat more reliable fashion (except for the fact that Contacts suck and...

I’ve just completed my upgrade to my site of the official 2.0 release of Subtext, the Open Source blogging engine that I use to manage content on this site. You can read the full announcement from grand poohba Haack himself here. I’m loving this release because of the improvements made but also a little selfishly because the modifications I’ve made to my own fork I’ve been using have made it into this release! These modifications really make this the best platform for me when using Live Writer. This may not make a difference to a lot of you,...